


Maybe it was the voice of the rain crying.

by chickadee



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:12:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickadee/pseuds/chickadee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For LJ user: onceuponapillow at The Girl on Fire ficathon here: http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html#comments</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe it was the voice of the rain crying.

“You know,” Gale says, reaching out to touch the curling edge of Johanna’s hair where it falls on the pillow, “you don’t have to be this way. With me.”

Johanna suppresses the feel of a shudder beneath her skin. She grits her teeth.

“What way?” Her voice is low, but strong. It always is.

Gale wants to say: “Frigid. Sharp-eyed and mean, sometimes. Closed-off. Like I’m a stranger here. That it means nothing. That it’s ok to build walls over and over around your head and your heart just because you know I’ll scale them all one by one until it’s just you and me in this fortress you’ve built yourself.”

Instead, Gale says: “Like we’re still at war.”

It takes Johanna a minute to answer. Gale thinks perhaps she’s fallen asleep and he almost gives up, but then she turns onto her side and looks at him with a vulnerability that Gale has only ever seen in the wild eyes of trapped game. It’s a look that says _I’m scared. My life is hanging in the balance._ You’re the only who can save me. It’s a look that is a gift and Gale wants to reach out and touch Johanna’s face, but he’s scared too and everything is fragile. And then she speaks.

“Sometimes you fight for so long that you forget what it’s like to not have anything to struggle against. And then, without even realizing it, you create a war against everything, the whole outside world because you only know yourself in the context of the fight and violence is the only family you have left.”

Gale does touch her then, and kisses her between her furrowed brows.

“Ok,” he says. And Johanna exhales a breath she didn’t realize she was holding because of all the people in all the world, Gale understands.


End file.
